Product manufacturers struggle to educate potential buyers about their product's benefits through various means. Their success if often dependent on printed material or inexperienced sales staff. This problem extends along the entire supply chain from inventor, manufacturer, marketers, resellers, retailers, and ultimately the end-consumer. Retailers are among the largest employers in the United States and spend enormous sums of money training new staff, yet they experience large employee turnover. With thousands of product suppliers pouring out thousands of new products, retailers often become overwhelmed when consumers demand better and faster service. In addition, shoppers have little feedback opportunities in what products, services, and/or employees they like or dislike.
Recently a wide range of interactive devices have been developed to provide information to consumers. These interactive devices include, for example, computers connected to various computer online services, interactive kiosks, interactive television systems, wireless communication systems and the like. These systems are designed to provide a wide variety of information which may be specific to particular products that the customer is interested in or alternatively, may have a wider scope and relate to various services or information about places and events which may be of interest to the user.
Most often the information provided to the customer may be obtained over the Internet and is usually information related to a particular product or similar such products that are available in a particular local or by way of shopping utilizing a website. The information provided to the consumer may be in a form to be utilized on the consumer's personal computer (PC) or a handheld device such as a cellular phone or a personal digital assistant (PDA).
Various prior art patents disclose systems of the type above referred to and those which appear to Applicants' to be most pertinent are disclosed below.